Depending on what hemisphere you live in, you have just experienced either the longest or the shortest day of the year. June 21st is Summer Solstice. For those in the Northern Hemisphere, this time of Midsummer marks the time when the sun is at its most potent. The urge to gather and create can be particularly strong now. From now until mid-December the days will be progressively shorter.

While the Northern Hemisphere is experiencing the longest day of the year, the Southern Hemisphere is experiencing the shortest day of the year. Winter has arrived south of the equator.

This got me thinking. As a phenomenon is happening in one place, the reverse is true in another. It’s all about where you stand. That can also correlate to perspective. It’s really about where you happen to be standing. No singular experience or perception is truth. Facts are irrefutable. Perception does not change a fact.

Now, as we take this to its logical conclusion, and with no small amount of grace, we understand why empathy is so important.

The same rotation of the Earth’s orbit marks summer for me, and winter for another half of the planet at the same time. Both are happening simultaneously. Both are happening. Both are real.

At the micro-level, we are not living any life but our own. We are not In the same boat as anyone else, only in the same storm. How can we not express grace in the form of empathy? Listening. Learning. You don’t have to row another’s boat. You don’t need to walk in another’s shoes. No one is in your boat, or shoes for that matter. You must only understand that our collective experience is a mash-up of many, many perspectives.

There is no us. There is no them. The divide is a false construct that we adhere to for our own comfort. The labels we use to separate and categorize are outmoded. The borders are arbitrary and are typically drawn to confine.

Empathy is necessary, besties. As essential as our dignity. Without it, we are lost to the very machinations that endeavor to destroy us.

It’s Solstice. The turning of the seasons. A profound moment of change that our global ancestors marked and celebrated. As I honor the shifts in the sky above my head and the earth below my feet, I offer up grace. For us all.